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Geographical Referencing Learning Resources The Indices of Deprivation 2004 are measures of deprivation for every Super Output Area (SOA) in England. The indices were published (and then revised) by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 2004 and follow in a succession of central government indices of deprivation of which the previous version was the Indices of Deprivation 2000 (ID2000, also commonly known as the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000 or IMD2000). ID2004 was constructed for the government by the Social Disadvantage Research Centre at the University of Oxford under the directorship of Prof Mike Noble and it is therefore also common to find the indices referred to as the "Noble index". The index has been calculated at the SOA, rather than the individual, level and was one of the first data series to be published for the new SOA geography used by the Neighbourhood Statistics Service.
ID2004 was prepared in the context of the government's National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal and has been constructed by the aggregation of data from multiple sources, including the 2001 census and data from government administrative systems, grouped together under seven "domains" or dimensions of deprivation. The specific measures included do not all relate to exactly the same time period, nor are they all aggregated in the same way. The calculation and combination of the different measures and domains is complex, reflecting the ongoing discussion about the most appropriate way to assess and weight the different aspects of deprivation, which are common to all attempts to construct single indicators of such complex phenomena.
For full details of all the measures included in the index, the full documentation should be consulted, but the following table shows the measures included in each of the seven deprivation domains.
| Deprivation domain | Specific measures included |
| Income deprivation | Adults and children in income support households; Adults and children in
Income Based Job Seekers Allowance households; Adults and children in Working Families Tax
Credit households whose equivalised income (excluding housing benefits) is below 60% of median
before housing Costs; Adults and children in Disabled Person's Tax Credit households whose equivalised income (excluding housing benefits) is below 60% of median before housing Costs; National Asylum Support Service (NASS) supported asylum seekers in England in receipt of subsistence only and accommodation support |
| Employment deprivation | Unemployment claimant count (JUVOS) of women aged 18-59 and men aged 18-64 averaged over 4 quarters; Incapacity Benefit claimants women aged 18-59 and men aged 18-64; Severe Disablement Allowance claimants women aged 18-59 and men aged 18-64; Participants in New Deal for the 18-24s who are not included in the claimant count; Participants in New Deal for 25+ who are not included in the claimant count; Participants in New Deal for Lone Parents aged 18 and over |
| Health deprivation and disability | Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL); Comparative Illness and Disability Ratio (CIDR); Measures of emergency admissions to hospital, derived from Hospital Episode Statistics; Measure of adults under 60 suffering from mood or anxiety disorders, based on prescribing, Hospital Episode Statistics, suicides and health benefits data |
| Education, skills and training deprivation | Average points score of pupils at Key Stage 2; Average points score of pupils at Key Stage 3; Average points score of pupils at Key Stage 4 (GCSE/GNVQ - best of eight results); Proportion of young people not staying on in school or non-advanced further education above 16; Secondary school absence rate; Proportion of those aged under 21 not entering Higher Education; Proportions of working age adults (aged 25-54) in the area with no or low qualifications |
| Barriers to housing and services | Household overcrowding; LA level percentage of households for whom a decision on their application for assistance under the homeless provisions of housing legislation has been made, assigned to the constituent SOAs; Difficulty of Access to owner-occupation; Road distance to GP premises; Road distance to a supermarket or convenience store; Road distance to a primary school; Road distance to a Post Office |
| Living environment deprivation | Social and private housing in poor condition; Houses without central heating; Air quality; Road traffic accidents involving injury to pedestrians and cyclists |
| Crime | Burglary; Theft; Criminal damage; Violence |
The scores and ranks within England for each SOA are published separately for each ID2004 domain and for the overall index. Individual data for all the component measures are not published and the index cannot therefore be readily recalculated by the user or recast for other geographical units. Geographical linkage of other datasets to SOAs has thus been a widely used method of applying 2004 deprivation scores to external datasets.
Data and notes relating to ID2004 can be downloaded free of charge from the Communities and Local Government website [http://data.gov.uk/dataset/imd_2004 ]
Full documentation on ID2004 in PDF is available for download from the Communities and Local Government website [http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100407164233/http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/general-content/communities/indicesofdeprivation/216309/ ]
